


Icarus

by Vrunka



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: M/M, Religious Themes, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 16:48:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14382861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrunka/pseuds/Vrunka
Summary: It’s the nature of the beast to fly too close to the goddamn sun.





	Icarus

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the 12-15 year gap between the Seeds arriving in Montana and the actual game. I don’t know when. Ubisoft’s timeline is nonsense.

It’s the kind of weather they write about in novels; thick, sticky Georgia heat. Humid. Close. The kind of heat that feels like the whole world is holding its breath just before the exhale.

Tenuous.

Jacob Seed stares at the flame at the end of the match. Flickering. Flickering. He smothers it with his thumb, hardly even flinches at the sting. The back of his shirt clings to him, stuck to his skin with sweat, dark stains of it at the armpits, the collar.

Antiperspirant useless in this sort of weather.

He scratches his fingers under his chin. His beard has begun to grow in thicker now, fuller. It covers some of the scarring on his face but in this sort of heat it’s sweltering, prickly and uncomfortable.

Joseph looks up at him, watches him from across the table. The clicking of his pen is the only sound between them.

Still surreal.

Joseph is here. John is here. They are here together again. Jacob had half considered himself lost, abandoned and estranged from his brothers.

But ten months ago they showed up at the shelter. Ten months ago they had come for him and brought him here. Here. Montana. It’s not home, it’s doesn’t feel like home. But his brothers are here. It’s something at least.

John has changed the most; flashy talk now, show and smiles. But his ringed fingers still fidget with something like guilt, a restlessness that he hasn’t grown out of. The same kid that Jacob used to shove out of the way of their foster parents’ ire. There’s just a veneer now, a shinier shell. Toting himself like Joseph, trimmed beard and tattoos and scars.

The scars are maybe the weirdest part.

“What’s on your mind,” Joseph asks. A formality to his words.

A million years ago—twenty years ago—Joseph had asked essentially the same thing in the same damn heat only it was down in Georgia where it actually belonged and Jacob hadn’t been anything but a stupid kid with a stupid idea and the world had held its breath when Joseph had asked: “What are you thinkin’, Jake?”

The heat smothers.

Jacob draws a slow breath through his nose.

“People are going to say you’re crazy, you know,” he says.

Joseph smiles. A different smile than their childhoods. More meaning and more malice in it. Tenderness Jacob is pretty sure he could carve through with a knife.

“They do not believe for they cannot see. They’ll come to believe though. If we preach they will come.”

“Just cuz you got some soft-hearted Catholics attending your sermons doesn’t mean you have a flock, Joe.”

Joseph crosses his arms. His eyes flutter closed. Long lashes touching his cheeks, brushing the tops of them. Even as a kid he had such soulful eyes, so doe-like, so large.

Jacob picks the material of his shirt away from his chest, flaps it uselessly, like he is trying to bat away the heat, the thoughts. They have long, long outgrown their teens. There’s no room for whatever is going on in his head here.

“What are you thinkin’, Jake?” Joseph had asked, leaning too close. Sixteen, shirtless in the suffocating weather, all length and ribs and elbows. Sweat in his eyelashes, clumping them.

Joseph now says: “How can I have a flock when even my own blood doesn’t trust me?”

It’s laughable really. Painful. Jacob drums his fingers against the table top. The matches in the box between his hands clatter with every resounding impact in the wood.

The thick taste of sulfur, pungent and curling in the heat. Sticking to Jacob’s fingertips.

Is it now or was it then and does it truly matter?

“What are you thinkin’, Jake?”

The match, trembling. Joseph’s chest, skinny, concave, moving with every breath. His eyes never leaving the dancing orange flame. Bright with it. Shiny with it. The sweat on his skin like oil, little bumps of acne and the first soft growth of hair in the dip between his pecs.

“Of course I trust you,” Jacob says. “I’ve always trusted you. I would—“ Jacob bites his lip, then says it anyway. “If my only purpose in life was served by dying for you, Joseph, then so fucking be it. I would die for you.”

“I don’t want you to die for me. I don’t want anyone to die. God doesn’t want anyone to die. Not anymore.” Joseph’s gaze does not falter, not in the least. Jacob has to look away, down at his hands, curled on the table. Across to Joseph’s; folded now over each other. The pen still hanging from between his fingers. The tattoo of his pretty wife.

Jacob had not come home to attend the wedding. He had not come home to attend the funeral. He had not come home until they made him, forced him, discharged him. Unfit for active duty, they had said.

Jacob swallows. His tongue lingers at the corner of his mouth; his lips feel chapped, his throat feels gummy. Something inside of him is swollen, bloated with the heat, ready to burst. “Still though,” he says.

Joseph nods. The ends of his hair curl little droplets of sweat weighing them down; he needs to cut it soon, it’s getting too long, unkempt. “You’ve always done your best for us.”

Not good enough though. John and his fucking Yes. Joseph and this fucking Voice. Some protector, some shield, some sacrifice. Seems his family still managed to end up pretty broken despite his efforts.

“For us,” Jacob counters anyway. “You. John. Our family. I don’t give a shit about these others. These...these sheep you’re collecting.”

“That’s just it, Jacob—“ Not Jake, never Jake, not anymore, where it went Jacob cannot know, lost it in the years Jacob spent overseas maybe, lost it when they found him in a fucking homeless shelter debased and penniless and shivering. “If I am to save them, you have to care. They will be my family. Our family. Your brothers, your sisters.”

The world is waiting for the answer.

“I’ll do it cuz you’re asking. That’s all I can promise.”

Joseph’s expression softens. He reaches across the table to touch Jacob’s knuckles. Their skin slicks together, the damp sweat is almost cool at first contact. Jacob draws a breath in through his nose. The exhale never comes.

The tension in his belly does not release. The box of matches between his hands. Then or now. Ignition.

Joseph’s hand slides away.

He turns the page he is writing on over. His pen scratches against the paper.

—

It’s the kind of weather they write about in novels; thick, sticky Georgia heat. Humid. Close. The kind of heat that feels like the whole world is holding its breath just before the exhale.

Tenuous.

Jacob Seed is nineteen. His arm is broken in three places.

The people who expect him to call them Mother and Father had told the hospital he had fallen down the stairs. Jacob is unlucky; he already has a reputation as a liar with the authorities, with the doctors. The fact that there seem to be a lot of accidents around the Duncan’s farm is just coincidence. They bring the county so much income; so it must be just coincidence.

Jacob turns the box of matches over in his palm. He bounces his calves against the loft, feet hanging off the edge and into infinity. It has to be today. It can only be today. Daddy and Ma dearest are at the races. John is with the nanny. Joseph...never seems to hang around much on the weekends, sixteen and busy, busy.

Summer is in full bloom, full blush. Jacob wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a girl devouring his middle brother’s time. A Sara maybe, a Rachel. Something unassuming and frail.

He turns the box again.

The heat makes his jeans cling to his legs. Itchy, prickling sweat at his waistband and under his cast. The world holds its breath, he only needs to exhale, to drop the shoe.

“Jake,” Joseph’s voice calls from down below. Reedy. He’ll grow into it, but it’s still got the scratchy stretch of youth to it.

Jacob tips his head. Well laid plans indeed. He licks his lips, his tongue rasps dry against them. It’s even hotter up in the hayloft than it is outside. His voice comes out sounding thick, swollen.

“I’m up here,” he says. He turns the matchbox over in his hand. The striking surface is rough on his palm.

“What are you doin’ in the loft?” Jospeh asks. There’s a teasing tone in his voice that has somehow survived the heat. Jacob doesn’t have the energy to play, to tease back.

He turns the matches in his hand. “I’m just thinking,” he says.

He hears the sounds of Joseph on the ladder, scaling it, the creaking of the wood. He doesn’t turn his head to see him; doesn’t need to. Joseph sits too close, collapses down in a heap with his legs hanging off the edge of the loft like Jacob’s, bare feet, pieces of hay stuck to the soles.

He’s shirtless.

Jacob closes his eyes. He doesn’t look at the slope of his brother’s stomach. When he open his eyes he is staring into the space beyond their feet, that far wall of the barn.

Joseph elbows him, lightly, attention grabbing. Jacob looks at him. At his face. His skinny jaw, his long lashes. He notices the matchbox in Jacob’s hand; his eyes flit down to it, then up to Jacob’s face. Wide, wide.

He leans close. Too close. The heat radiating off his body is oppressive, smothering.

His hair, sticking up with his sweat, bushes Jacob’s cheek. His fingers brush Jacob’s cast.

“What are you thinkin’, Jake?”

The world holds it breath.

Jacob’s thigh presses against Joseph’s, it could almost be an accident. Their feet hang out in the air over nothing, a ten foot drop to the hard ground below.

“I don’t know,” Jacob admits. “I’m...”

“Scared.” It isn’t a question. Jospeh swallows. His Adam’s apple trembles. There’s a hickey in the shadow of his jaw, Jacob was probably right about a girlfriend. Joseph looks down, his eyes lingering on Jacob’s fist. The top of the box of matches.

“Does it hurt still?” he asks. Fingers curling on the cast. The hollow sound of his nails catching on the plaster.

“Nah,” Jacob lies. “Not really. It’s fuckin’ hot though, feels trapped in an oven.”

Jospeh’s tongue swipes across his lips at the mention of the heat. A bead of sweat curls down his temple and under his chin; something in Jacob aches to wipe it away, to rub his thumb over the cut of his brother’s jaw.

But he doesn’t.

It’s too hot for that.

Too hot for much of anything.

“I’m sorry,” Joseph says. “I shoulda—“

“Nothing you coulda done, Joe,” Jacob says. He looks back out at the far wall of the barn, knots and swirls in the natural wood. “I’d rather take it, you know? I can take it. You...John. I...”

“I should be strong enough to fight them. I’m—when they’re hurting you, when they’re—I just I-I—“ Joseph is whispering, desperate, manic. His eyes boring holes into Jacob’s when their gazes catch. “You’re my family. We should kill anyone who hurts our family.”

Jacob rolls the matchbox in his hand, the matches inside clicking together as gravity resettles them in new arrangements. It shouldn’t be as loud as it is. The noise of it deafening in the quiet of the barn, the dead air.

“It’s been a pretty dry summer,” Jacob says. One handed he pushes the box open. Joseph’s fingers coax his aside, fish in the cramped space until they pull one singular match free. The red tip, the thin stick.

Dirt under Joseph’s nail, a little line of black. Better than Jacob, Jacob bites his down to the quick, until they are bloody and aching.

He stands, Joseph follows. The smooth, smooth motion, stomach flexing, shoulders shifting. Sweat pooled in the hollow of his collarbone, little droplets. Jacob looks away.

The smell of sulfur is thick and cloying in the air as Jacob awkwardly lights the match. Hard to do one-handed, Joseph’s fingers steadying his wrist help.

Joseph is breathing too fast. Chest rising and falling in quick, rapid movements. Excitement. This excites him.

Jacob licks his lips. His own heart is racing, adrenaline surging in his throat. The flame dances at the end of the match, such a little thing, just a spark of orange. Blistering heat that rivals the weather.

He looks over his shoulder.

The hay barrels up here smell too. A heady, animalistic scent, decay and grass. Dry, dry, dry. Without even the kiss of a breeze.

“Once it lights,” Joseph says, “we’re gonna have to run. Have to go. I’m faster than you.”

“You’re not.”

“Am too, Jake. Plus you gettin’ down that ladder with a busted arm...” he trails off.

The match flickers in Jacob’s fist, almost goes out, but it doesn’t. Persistent.

“You should go on down,” he says to Joseph. “You don’t need to—“

Joseph shakes his head. His eyes never leaving the small flame. His lashes. His throat. Acne on his chest, on his shoulders, little rashes of red. “This is gonna hurt them. I wanna help you hurt them.”

The flame creeps down the wood, nearer and nearer to Jacob’s fingers. It has to be today, it has to be now and it has to be him.

He flicks the match away.

Both boys watch it go, flipping through the air, just a spark of yellow and guttering light. A comet seen from a million miles away. Visible for a second, arching and then gone.

Jacob frowns. Thrown too violently, the wind of the journey must have smothered the flame.

He goes to step forward, Joseph’s hand grabs his good wrist. Slick skin, sweat that’s almost cool to the touch.

From the nearest bale a small, winding tendril of smoke begins to rise. Like a snake. Lazy. Coiling in the heat. It twists up toward the ceiling, stretching.

“Run,” Joseph says.

And they do.

Joseph hits the ladder first, not cuz he’s faster but because he is closer. His eyes meet Jacob’s as he swings his legs over the side.

There’s a sound to the fire now, crackling to life. Gorging itself on the hay. Like a monstrous animal at Jacob’s back. And the heat, like standing in front of the sun.

As soon as Joseph’s head has cleared the top of the ladder, Jacob is throwing himself down it. One handed, clinging to the rungs. He’s climbed this ladder countless times in the years since the Duncan’s adopted them, no time before has ever felt like this. His bicep aches with the pressure of holding him up, keeping him balanced as he scrambles to go faster.

He can see the fire. Kissing at the roof of the barn, bright, bright, bright. So bright he can barely stand to look at it. He squints against it, but he doesn’t look away. Looking down would be worse. Much worse.

“Come on, Jake,” Joseph is saying. Yelling. So different than their intimate whispers just a few minutes ago.

Now the fire is life, they must struggle to be heard over it. Strong enough to overcome it.

Less than halfway to go and Jacob’s foot catches, the tread of his sneaker slips. By the time he has felt the jolt of weightlessness it is already too late. He falls the last three and a half feet. His ankles scream at the impact, lancing lines of pain that swirl up his shins and into his knees.

“You okay?” Joseph’s hand on his back. Joseph’s chest brushing his shoulder. “We gotta get out, Jake.”

Jacob nods. He chances one last glance up into the loft. The smoke gathered beneath the roof like rain clouds. Poisonous and dark. Such a counterpoint to that blinding fire. The inferno that has begun to noisily devour the wood of the loft.

A dry summer.

A dry summer.

They run.

Out of the barn. Across the field. Jacob’s legs protest but he makes them run. Goes high over the fence to the pasture when Joseph goes low, the two of them clearing it like deer.

The cows have not started to panic yet, but two boys running through their midst, smelling of smoke and adrenaline have them uneasy. They eye the boys, mooing warily as the Seeds go.

It isn’t until they’ve reached the far end that they stop.

Jacob’s heart is still beating too fast. His legs are agony. He clutches the final fence before dragging himself over it. Joseph, already over, turns to look at him. They are both out of breath. Panting. Sweating. Smiling.

As Jacob ducks under the rail his legs mutiny, he ends up in a pile just past the fence. Shaking. He looks up at Joseph and the two of them are laughing. Manic with it, crazy sounding. Jacob’s laughter is like a bray, spilling out of him uncontrollably.

Behind them, smoke has begun to leak from the roof of the barn, from the door. Billowing. Jacob spares it a glance before it has him doubled over laughing again.

Joseph is next to him. Leaning against him. Too close for how hot it is. Too intimate for who they are. Joseph’s mouth is open, corners of his lips upturned. Still chuckling, riding the high of their shared experience.

Jacob wants to kiss him.

Jacob has never wanted anything more in all of his life.

Joseph is a boy, worse than that his brother, but for some reason the image is there and it isn’t leaving. Vivid. Color. What Joseph’s sweat would taste like under his tongue, the curl of his lips. The map of him, little scars and freckles and bumps.

“Jake,” Joseph breathes. Grinning still. Nose wrinkled. Chest heaving.

Jacob pulls away.

He stares up at the sun.

It’s no brighter than the fire they started in the darkness of the barn. It barely even rivals it.

Jacob swallows.

A breeze flutters against his skin. The world exhaling. The wait is done all that’s left now is to manage the fallout from what they have started.

—

“Shit,” Jacob mutters as the metal slides out of his grip, cutting clean into his palm. Blood comes quick, pattering to the floor as he curls his fist, squeezing at the wound.

Building enough cages to keep the wolves isn’t easy work. He’d gone asking at the F.A.N.G. Center and had been given a pretty decent fuck off from the owners. Joseph has decreed that the time isn’t right to make any sudden or violent moves, Jacob had had to take the slight without any sort of recourse.

John says they can’t buy the place, not outright, not yet. Jacob hates it. Hates this. This goddamn place, the goddamn state. The heat and humidity and the goddamn people.

More of them everyday.

He’d been wrong. Joseph has a flock, a following, a message that people are ready to hear. The collapse is coming. Jacob can feel it in his gut. And so can so many others. They come in vans, or from town. They come ready to embrace Joseph as their Father.

A cult. It’s no secret that’s what the sherif is calling them. And Jacob doesn’t think it’s too far off. He’s heard the way the followers talk, Joseph’s sheep, who believe him God. The second coming of Christ. What is that if not a cult?

Doesn’t really matter one way or the other. Weak people need something to idolize, to venerate; if they want to believe his brother has a one-way line with Jesus, or that he shits gold, or that he’s the Anti-Christ from Rome himself, Jacob couldn’t really care less.

He turns his palm, studying the wound. The fresh, clean gash in his skin. When he straightens his fingers it opens like a mouth, toothless and bloody, screaming.

“That looks deep,” Joseph says and Jacob jumps. It’s not often people catch him unaware, Joseph is one of the few who can. He is silent when he wants to be, an absolute specter.

“Had worse,”Jacob says, but he holds his hand out anyway.

Joseph makes a noise, rolling acknowledgment from the back of his throat. His fingers are gentle as they press the injured skin. Jacob doesn’t flinch again. He lets his breath out through his teeth. Exhaling.

He wishes, suddenly, a comet in the dark, that he weren’t shirtless right now. Working like a dog in this heat with this metal it hadn’t seemed like a bad idea. Now though. With Joseph here, looking at him...

“Will it scar?” Joseph asks.

Jacob’s fingers curl, reflexive, tangling briefly with Joseph’s. “I dunno. Maybe. Got worse ones of those too.”

“I remember some of them,” Joseph says, nodding. His gaze drops to the burn blisters that litter Jacob’s right side. The spiderwebbing pockmarks from gunfire and shrapnel. “You have many new scars though.”

“Same goes for you. Gluttony, was it? Greed?”

Joseph doesn’t sigh, but his shoulders sag slightly. “We wear our sins so that we may confront them. We carve them in as atonement. I would ask nothing of my children that I would not be willing to endure. This time the suffering shall be shared by all, I will not be the figurehead who dies upon the cross. We will all split the burden and we will all be saved.”

Jacob narrows his eyes. They’re standing so close; Joseph’s fingers still clasped around his hand. “I’m a little lost I guess,” he says. “Are you Jesus in this drama or are you God?”

“Jacob—“

“No, no, no. Don’t. I’m on board. The crazy train is going and I’m-I’m strapped in, Joe, okay? I’m not goin’ anywhere but just, for the next time, when we talk, I wanna make sure I know which page of bible speak to have my brain tuned into. We going Revelations here or—“

“Jacob, stop it.” Firmer now. Biting. Reprimand Jacob has never heard from his brother before. His face is dark, eyes blazing. Jacob thinks unbidden of the smoke gathering under the roof of the barn almost thick enough to blot out the glory of their fire.

For a moment, he remembers the fear, the pain. The impression of their inferno burned into his irises. Light he would see ghosts of in the darkness for days to come.

The rage passes quickly from Joseph’s face. In their childhoods it would have led to blows. But Joseph is someone different now. His eyes close, he takes a breath, two.

“You blasphemy because you know no better. Because no one has taught you,” he says. “Do you want me to teach you?”

No.

Jacob doesn’t need to understand. He doesn’t want to. The end is coming, sure enough, he doesn’t need to believe in God to believe that.

He shakes his head.

Joseph’s thumb traces a small circle on his wrist. Lines. The cross of Eden’s Gate. “You can talk to me, Jacob,” he says. “You’re so distant now.”

Like Jacob is the one who changed.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Joseph’s shoulders roll. His head tips to the side. He’s pulled his hair back today, the beginning of a bun that accentuates his widow’s peak. A few more years and that hairline will officially be receding. Joseph licks his lips; Jacob pretends he doesn’t watch the motion with rapt attention.

“I don’t know either,” Joseph says. Quietly. Leaning forward just the tiniest bit like he is sharing a secret. “Honestly I just...if you weren’t fighting me—“

“I’m not fighting you,” Jacob says. Arguing despite the fact it proves Joseph’s point. “I believe you. I just want you to save me the...the fucking cult shit. For a minute can’t you just be my brother again?”

Joseph’s eyebrows flex. Something like a smile, his old smile, those damn corners of his lips turning up under his beard. “I am your brother, Jacob.”

“Not like you used to be. There’s something—“ wrong, he wants to say. He can’t. “Different.”

“We aren’t kids anymore. But if you want me to burn another barn down with you,” he says, “there’s plenty to choose from.”

“No,” Jacob says. Quicker than he means to. Joseph’s eyes seem to catch some light that isn’t there, the flame sputtering through the air. Sealing their fate. “It’s not what I meant.”

“I know. I’m kidding. We both have changed,” Joseph says.

He reaches up, he touches Jacob’s face. Always been bad with boundaries, sitting too close in the heat. His palm is warm, gentle, he strokes a knuckle through Jacob’s beard. “I was going to say that your arguing keeps me grounded.”

“What?”

“Before you interrupted,” he says. Smiling still. Little flickering shades of that sixteen year old boy up in the loft. “It’s easy to...lose sight of things. There’s a lot of expectations, from the people. From Faith. From John. There isn’t with you. You expect nothing and you give everything. You only ask for my honesty. It’s refreshing.”

“Oh.”

Joseph does smile, full of teeth, bottom lip pulling under them, biting down slightly. Chuckling. “Oh,” he echoes.

His fingers grip Jacob’s chin, thumb sliding to press into the vulnerable underside. “But there’s a difference between questioning and mocking,” he continues. “Your purpose is to question always. Mock, never. I forgive you, this time, just be vigilant they don’t become confused again.”

I forgive you.

Jacob blinks. It’s not what he was after or what he wanted, but the words bring him a measure of peace regardless.

“What are you thinkin’, Jake?” Joseph had asked.

“I love you,” Jacob says, now, as Joseph’s forehead touches his own. The barest, sweetest contact. Joseph’s breath stutters against his chin, a sharp inhale. And nothing.

Holding his breath.

Tenuous.

Waiting.

Jacob can feel the blood in his face, the stifling blush that is surging up from his chest so quickly it’s a wonder he doesn’t faint.

“What did you say,” Joseph says. He moves his head back. A little bit, his eyes meeting Jacob’s, searching. His hand is sweating against Jacob’s neck.

He is the sun. He is their fire. Too bright to look at. Jacob’s gaze flicks away, off to the left, up to the ceiling. The swollen thing in him feels like it rolls in his gut, spreading.

“I love you,” he says again. Barely. It’s a fight to force the words past his teeth.

Jacob smiles. His fingers tremble. “I know,” he says. “You don’t have to say it. I’ve always known.”

Jacob tries to swallow. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, drags dryly over his teeth. The thing in his gut, sinking. The match turning end over end as it arcs through the air.

Joseph takes another breath, his exhale ruffles Jacob’s beard. “I can’t give you the answer you want, Jacob,” he says. “I can’t.”

It’s the first tendril of smoke.

Curling in the air, so thin and so singular.

Joseph’s lips part. There is sweat on his nose, in his beard. His lashes are clumped with it.

This time Jacob finds out what it tastes like. The salt sting of it under his tongue as he crushes his mouth against Joseph’s mouth. Desperate. Hands grabbing at Joseph’s biceps, keeping him close.

Pain in his palm from the gash is secondary, just another form of fire coiling in his belly. Just another spark, impossible to look at, too bright and too hot.

Jacob whines, wordlessly, as Joseph’s lips open for him. As Joseph kisses back. His fingers hooking around Jacob’s neck, coaxing him to move at a different angle. A better angle.

Jacob shivers despite the dreadful heat; full-bodied. His lips leave Joseph’s just long enough to drag in a ragged breath. Panting. Adrenaline coursing through him.

Joseph’s pupils are pinpoints, his lips are already starting to get pink and swollen. His hand presses flat against Jacob’s chest when Jacob lowers his face again.

“We can’t,” he says. He swallows. Jacob can hear something in his throat clicking dryly. “We can’t, Jake.”

Jake.

There it is. After all this time. All these months. “What are you thinkin’, Jake?” What are you thinking?

Joseph takes a step back.

Jacob’s blood on his sleeve. Jacob’s sweat staining the front of his vest. Joseph shakes his head. He looks rattled. He looks unsure.

“I need to go,” he says.

And so he does.

Jacob does not try to stop him.

“What are you thinkin’, Jake?”

That all it takes is a spark. A dry summer of Georgia heat and an errant spark.

The world exhales.

Now all that’s left is to manage the fallout.

**Author's Note:**

> I got two fucking Far Cry tattoos someone please send help; I officially need it.


End file.
